[Air-L] New article on Personal Data Tracking in the Mobile Ecosystem

[Jennifer Pybus]

Dear all,

I am pleased to share a new open-access article ‘Super SDKs: Tracking personal data and platform monopolies in the mobile<https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20539517241231270>’, co-authored with Mark Coté at King’s College London, published in Big Data & Society. It will be of interest particularly to those of you who are already doing great critical scholarship on mobile apps, datafication, surveillance and platform capitalism, and crucial infrastructure studies.

Our article introduces an innovative socio-technical methodology for the more finely granulated tracking (auditing) of personal data capture and use by apps and third parties in the mobile ecosystem. We introduce a heretofore overlooked technical object—SDKs (Software Development Kits)—and offer a taxonomy to better understand data monetisation and predictive analytics. A major finding is the special category of the Super SDK, reserved for giants like Google and Facebook, which are the primary means for the expansion of platform monopolisation across the mobile ecosystem. Finally, we deploy the concept of ‘data monadology’ to theorise the value of our micro-perspective on data, as a grounded critical supplement to the macro-perspective on platforms and infrastructures.

I should add this work emerges from a number of UKRI-funded research projects done here at King’s, including workshops done with our students, and is a testament to the research-led teaching our department cultivates.

Please share and circulate this article if you find it useful.

All the best,
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Dr. Jennifer Pybus (she/her)
Canada Research Chair in Data Democracy and AI
Department of Politics

YORK UNIVERSITY
Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies
4700 Keele Street • Toronto ON • Canada • M3J 1P3
T: 416-736-5686. W: https://profiles.laps.yorku.ca/profiles/jpybus/


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